Starry Nights – A Natural Resource

It’s the 19th century. All alone at night, you’re taking the long
journey from the city of Fairfax to the township of Occoquan. It’s a
difficult, even dangerous undertaking.

Unless you knew the way well, the trip would be almost impossible in the
near total darkness of a moonless night. The road would have been rutted,
muddy at least half of the year, and there was always the threat of being
robbed. With few if any road signs and houses far apart and all dark,
just about the only thing to bring comfort would have been a true
nighttime resource -- the sky.

And what a starry sky it must have been! With no competing light from
the ground, and no smog, the heavens would have appeared packed with
stars and planets. With a glance at the sky, folks used to being outdoors
after dark would know the approximate time of night it was and which
direction they were facing. Modern studies have shown that
night-migrating birds use the stars for navigation. That may seem amazing
to us now, but only because we have become so removed from the night sky.
Fact is, using stars for navigation is probably easier than using rivers,
coastlines or mountain ranges.

We too can gaze upon the stars and ponder our place and our destiny. To
watch the heavenly bodies and understand their motions, the phases of the
moon, the motion of the earth -- is to truly feel the earth move under
your feet. However, to experience this, we do have to actually see the
stars.

Becoming Reacquainted with the Sky

Winter is a good time to become reacquainted with the visible universe.
It gets dark earlier, the constellations are more striking in winter, and
the air is clearer. It is a paradox that even though science has given us
a far greater (though still, oh, so incomplete) understanding of what we
are looking at, few of us have the opportunity now to really see the
stars as our ancestors did. Still, with warm clothes and a blanket, a
pair of binoculars, and a chaise lounge, we can once again appreciate at
least a part of the wondrous sky overhead.

By mid-December at 9 pm, we find Orion the Hunter, perhaps the most
recognized of all the constellations, midway up the southeast sky.
Orion’s eastern shoulder is marked by the red supergiant star Betelgeuse.
Marking his western knee is the bluish-white giant Rigel. In the
northeast, we find the Gemini twins Castor and Pollux . The two normally
look like a pair of cold eyes staring down at us but this winter, they
are joined by the planet Saturn.

By mid-January Orion is high in the south at 9 pm. A line drawn through
the three stars in his belt extended to the east points toward Sirius,
the brightest star in the sky, only 8.8 light years away. If we extend
that line to the west it points roughly to the reddish star Aldebaran
(the brightest star in the Taurus constellation) and further still to the
seven sisters of the Pleiades, a well-known faint, but delicately
beautiful small cluster of stars. Ancient Mayan lore speaks of the
Pleiades as a homeland. The Japanese call the cluster Subaru.

By mid-February these stars will have moved into the southwest. However,
if you look straight up (see why you need the lounge chair?), you now
find Castor and Pollux and their companion Saturn. Just a short distance
to the southeast, you can find with your binoculars the cluster of stars
known as the beehive. The beehive is a faint swarm of stars; about 60 of
which are just visible to the naked eye under the best conditions, but no
longer in our area due to light pollution.

The night sky is still an important resource. Astronomers must build
their telescopes on some of the highest, most remote mountains on earth
to get away from light pollution. They study the heavens to try to come
to an understanding of the very beginnings of the universe, and perhaps
its fate. To watch the heavenly bodies and understand their motions, the
phases of the moon, the motion of the earth -- is to truly feel the earth
move under your feet. However, to experience this, we do have to actually
see the stars.

Do you think night skies are a natural resource? Email ResOURces
and let us know.